the Tayloes at their home during his visit to Washington in the winter of 1862. Country estate In addition to his home in Washington City, Tayloe owned Petworth, a estate in Washington County near the Soldiers' Home at the northeast corner of 7th Street Pike and Rock Creek Church Road. Plantation activities Tayloe purchased cotton plantations in northeast Marengo (now Hale) and southwest Perry counties between Uniontown and Selma, Alabama, in 1836. A slave owner, Tayloe gradually moved most of his slaves from Virginia to Alabama, and invested most of his capital in the plantation. The Tayloes spent the following year traveling in Europe. The plantation was managed by Tayloe's younger brother, Henry Augustine Tayloe, who proved a less than capable manager and was relieved of his position in 1843. The Tayloe property flourished afterward, and by 1851 Benjamin and his other brother, William, owned seven plantations (which included more than and 465 slaves worth $334,250 [about $13.6 million in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars]). The Tayloes were the largest absentee landlords in Alabama. Overseer Robert Morgan earned $1,200 annually for his duties on the Benjamin Ogle Tayloe plantation, 2.4 times what most overseers in the Canebrake Region of Alabama did. Tayloe visited his property in Alabama only twice during his lifetime. Tayloe's views on slavery were somewhat moderate in nature. He strongly (but privately) disapproved of sexually abusing slaves and miscegenation. He felt it inappropriate to ask his daughters to inherit slaves (except for a few household slaves, if the girls wished it). Although Tayloe supported slavery as a legal institution, he did not feel the issue should bring about the dissolution of the Union. During the slavery crisis of 1850, Tayloe favored maintaining union over maintaining slavery in the Deep South. He wrote at the time: S.C. is ripe for disunion. ... Her glory has departed—& she knows it. That is the rub. But the Union must & will be preserved—as I think. Still S.C. may annoy our sisterhood with her old maidish complaints & reproaches. She is proud & poor—having been rich! Poor S.C.! Nonetheless, he generally opposed freeing the slaves, and believed that slavery and union could co-exist if only partisan political feeling could be reduced. When Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane (leaving him severely wounded) on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1856, Tayloe applauded Brooks' actions and